The Portland Generation Station, which employs 80 people in Upper Mount Bethel Township, will go offline in January 2015 and the Glen Gardner station will shut down in May 2015, according to the news release. In all, eight stations will be closed between June of this year and May 2015 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the company reports.

"This deactivation is being driven by the costs of complying with upcoming environmental regulations, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS)," the company said in a related email. The company said in the news release the closures and time frames "are subject to further review based on market conditions."

GenOn's Glen Gardner location is an unmanned site featuring eight combustion turbines. Its operations are overseen by the larger Gilbert Generating Station in nearby Holland Township and burns natural gas rather than coal.

While the Glen Gardner site has the capability of producing up to 160 megawatts of generating capacity, the Portland Generating Station operates on a larger platform, able to handle up to 401 megawatts.

Bangor Councilman Dave Houser said this morning the closure will have an impact on the Bangor Area School District's bottom line as well as on the families of workers.

"If they're going to close it, they're going to close it," he said with a tone of resignation. "It will have a major impact on the school district. It will have an impact tax-wise and in disrupting families."

He said it will also affect the landfill, which takes coal ash from the plant.

The stricter mercury standards are part of a nationwide regulation the
EPA passed in December. The rule would have required the Portland
Generating Station to cut its mercury emissions by 91 percent by 2015 along with its chromium and hydrochloric
acid emissions. Plant officials knew for months the mercury regulations
could be the ones that put the Portland Generating Station out of
business.

"What comes out of that (decision) matters tremendously to us," Steve Davies, GenOn's vice president of asset management, said in an October interview.

About the same time, the 53-year-old coal-burning plant was singled out by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the EPA for creating a majority of the sulfur dioxide pollution in northern New Jersey. In late October, the EPA issued a 95-page ruling that the Upper Mount Bethel Township power plant had three years to reduce its permitted sulfur dioxide emissions by 81 percent.

Although the plant was following all Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection regulations, crosswinds carried the pollutants into New Jersey, where they did not meet more stringent state requirements.

GenOn in January appealed the EPA's sulfur dioxide ruling.

New Jersey DEP spokesman Larry Hanja said that while the decision to close
the plant was solely GenOn's to make, the department's job is to maintain
environmental standards for the state's residents.

"Our goal has been to
reduce the pollution that comes from the plant that affects New Jersey and
Pennsylvania residents directly," Hanja said. "It's the company's choice to make
whatever decision they do."

Myriam Fallon, Greenpeace field organizer, said GenOn's announcement is a step in the right direction toward achieving cleaner air quality standards in the region.

"It's great to hear that GenOn is taking this step with the Portland plant," said Fallon. "It's definitely the right decision."

In June 2011, U.S. Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Bob Casey, D-Pa., and U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Lehigh Valley, in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, asked the EPA to consider easing the time restraints of the proposed rule. The legislators said existing laws would require all other power plants in Pennsylvania to meet the same emissions standards, but over a longer period of time.

"We are concerned that prematurely binding GenOn's decisions on how to comply with identified requirements will not result in the best solution and may come at a cost of lost jobs, reduced reliability and higher electric costs. Accordingly, we encourage EPA to provide GenOn with flexibility in the timing of the submission of the compliance plan to meet required emission limits," the lawmakers wrote.

GenOn has said it would have cost $300 million to $500 million to upgrade the Portland plant and achieve the requirements set by the EPA to cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 81 percent.

The EPA estimates its rules will save up to 34,000 lives, prevent 15,000 heart attacks and stave off 400,000 asthma attacks each year, easing health treatment costs by $120 billion to $280 billion across the nation.

Houston-based GenOn Energy owns, contracts or operates 47 generating stations in 12 states, including 18 in Pennsylvania and three in New Jersey, including one in Glen Gardner, Hunterdon County, according to its corporate website. GenOn was formed in December 2010 by a merger between Mirant Corp. and RRI Energy.

GenOn today is announcing an adjusted $132 million loss for continuing operations in 2011 as compared to adjusted income of $163 million in 2010, according to the news release. Its net loss was $189 million, compared to $233 million in 2010.

Mark Baird, GenOn's director of external affairs, did not wish to make any further comments on the announcement.